Africa's Unanswered Prayer
by makinglulz
Summary: Why God Ignores Africa


**Nord-Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo**

The town of Kimemi seemed a far cry from the popular perception of an African village. Built of cinderblocks, sheet metal, and scrap, dozens of buildings in the same drab stains of brown and gray sat clustered around a grid pattern of mud roads. In the rainy season, the packed earth roads of the city transformed into an impassable morass of mud. Like most of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's smaller towns, Kimemi lacked electricity, running water, or even regular garbage pickup. With the start of the rainy season the piles of garbage and human waste which had been left along these roads combined into a foul soup that seemed to blanket the ground across the city.

With the torrent of rains that defined life here in the wet season, all residents of Kimemi knew the single route of access to the outside world: a heavily potholed dirt road leading to the provincial capital of Goma, became such a thick morass that few but the most adept four wheel drive vehicles could manage. For all intents and purposes, the people of Kimemi were completely isolated from the outside world for these few months of the year. Perhaps, every so often, a UN convoy or some trader would come through, but few would want to risk the very real chance of becoming ensnared in the morass that was a Congolese highway in the wet season.

In most of the world, this isolation would be met with uneasiness, but here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the wet season isolation brought a kind of relief. For over 14 years, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had been an anarchic warzone. Mobutu Sese Seko, the last man who could claim to have controlled the entire country, was overthrown in 1996. Mobutu's rule had been nothing but an exercise in graft and corruption, stealing billions from the nation and leaving infrastructure to decay. He would fly between his palaces scattered across the country. Leaving much of his army unpaid, he asked why should he pay his soldiers when they had guns? Indeed, many of them chose to pay themselves by stealing from the people on a scale equal to Mobutu himself.

When the ailing and aging dictator finally met his end and fled the country, the skeleton of a state he bequeathed to his successor was left to pick up the pieces. Roads had been left to decay by a President who flew from palace to palace, often on a chartered Concorde. The army, reduced to little more than an armed gang which stole from the population, controlled the mines and cities and left the vast expanses beyond without any real government presence. It served as no surprise that such a neglected country had yet to experience peace since the fall of Mobutu in 1996. Armed militias and rebels, with the occasional military presence of the Congo's neighbors, had devastated the country.

Patrice Bolongo stared out the doorway of Kimemi's only clinic onto the muddy streets. As the only doctor in the area, the demands he regularly faced were far beyond those of most in his profession. His pay, however, if it came, was far lower. He sighed a bit as he turned from the doorway to the Spartan clinic interior, a small two room structure built of cinderblocks and roofed with corrugated tin. Eight beds along the walls and a doorway leading to the storage room were the only furnishings. All these beds had been filled, and a dozen more people had been left on the floor of the clinic, all tended to by a pair of nuns and a single doctor.

The diagnosis for all of them had been the same- malaria. This wet season had brought this regular and deadly scourge to Kimemi with a vengeance. Dozens had contracted the disease so far, many, the old, the young, and the infirm especially, had died.

Patrice sighed deeply; his clinic was on the last few days of supplies for anti-malarial drugs. All supplies were now dangerously short. The impassable roads meant that there was little hope more would come before the overworked clinic would run out of anti-malarial agents entirely. He turned back into the clinic, standing at the foot of the second of the row of beds. Delirious with fever, a small girl lay on the bare mattress, one of the two nuns attending to her while Patrice simply looked on. "What would happen to her if the supplies don't come in time," he thought to himself.

Patrice walked back to the door, his mind dwelling on the hopelessness of the situation. He had come out here because he felt he had a duty to help his country. Here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a ratio of one doctor for every 11,000 people, but a single medical professional in a distant clinic could do much to save the lives of others. It was why he chose his path in life, and why he never regretted the hardships he faced here in Kimemi. He felt it was his duty to help those the rest of the world ignored.

The clatter of rain on the tin roof suddenly slowed, then stopped. Patrice stared out the clinic's window, watching the rain slowly ebb, then cease altogether. The streets of Kimemi, just moments ago completely empty of people, slowly came back to life. People ventured out from their homes, vendors set up their stalls selling various goods and food. Life here simply paused for the rains, heavy when they came, but with the return of the sun, it returned back to the chaotic bustle of a small Congolese town.

For a moment Patrice's gaze caught a mother carrying an infant walking along the opposite side of the muddy street from the clinic. He watched for a moment, then shifted his attention back towards the patients, before a sudden noise caught his attention again.

Patrice heard a distant pop, followed by another, and another, he stared outside, his eyes scanning for the source of the noise. He was puzzled, it sounded like nothing he had heard before… Then, a whining noise that seemed to draw closer by the second…

An orange gout of hot flame erupted further down the street, a thunderclap of noise stunning Patrice as he saw the infant and his mother who had been there not a moment ago disappear in the explosion. Those standing around them were torn to shreds, torn to bits by shrapnel, burned beyond recognition. Arms and legs torn from their owners floated on the muddy streets, now stained crimson with blood. The wounded screamed in pain, writhing on the ground.

Patrice did nothing, his eyes widened with fear and his mind thrown into shock at witnessing a crowd of people venturing out in a break from the rain rendered to a bloody pulp. More explosions tore across Kimemi. Cries of agony and terror echoed across the city as those who had ventured outside were caught in the explosions or rushed back inside in an attempt to get away. "Mortar shells… It has to be mortar shells," Patrice muttered to himself. A distant rattle shook him back to his senses, a sound many in the Congo knew all too well… gunfire… the distinctive clatter of Kalashnikovs fired at full auto. More cries of panic and terror approaching from the south.

Patrice Bolongo realized then that the ever-present Congolese civil war had finally come to him here in Kimemi. Rebels of some kind, he had no idea which ones, for rival political groups, former Hutu genocidaires from Rwanda, and chaotic and brutal Mai-Mai militias all had a presence here in the Eastern Congo. Any one of them could be attacking, but all were better to avoid. He knew that these patients, stricken with malaria and too weak to get to safety on their own would die, yet he also knew that it would be impossible to save all of them. He closed his eyes for a moment, then turned to the nuns.

"Grab the children in the clinic and follow me."

Patrice grabbed the girl, no more than 5 or 6, though he was not himself certain of her age and rushed out of the hospital while the nuns took the two infants in the ward and followed him through the doorway onto the streets. Chaos reigned as a crowd of people fled northwards, in the opposite direction from the gunfire and screams to the south. Deafening noises of exploding mortar shells followed by screams. Women clutching children, men, the citizens of Kimemi all seemed intent on fleeing as quickly as possible.

The rattle of gunfire grew louder, Patrice turned around, still running with the girl in his arms. The nuns were still following him closely. From the corner of his eye, he noticed a pick-up, a crew served PKM machinegun mounted on the bed and pointed directly at him. He instinctively threw himself around the corner of a nearby building onto a narrow alley crowded with now abandoned vendor's stalls. He threw the girl and himself to the ground and screamed.

"Cover!"

The deafening noise of the fully automatic machinegun tore through the streets. Patrice watched in horror as the fleeing civilians were cut to ribbons by a stream of bullets. Women, children, men, all were cut apart by the heavy Soviet-built machinegun's bullets. The two nuns carrying the ward's infants were shot multiple times through the chest, the infants died with them, caught by the same bullets that tore through their torsos.

Patrice could now hear the sounds of taunting and the lighter rattle of AK-47s being fired at the fleeing civilians. He peeked around the corner of the building, watching as the rebels followed the heavy machinegun-armed pickup trucks through the streets. They wore no military uniforms, nor did they seem like professional soldiers. Many were clearly children, yet were nonetheless armed and willingly massacring the fleeing people of Kimemi. They seemed to destroy as they went, setting fire to buildings by throwing Molotov cocktails through the windows and shooting those who fled the flames.

Patrice swore to himself, then grabbed the girl in his arms and took off down the side street. He would turn down another northbound road and try to make it to safety. He felt adrenaline pounding through him, the shock and dismay of watching so much bloodshed, yet he thought only of getting to safety.

He stopped as he heard the sounds of gunfire and the cries of wounded civilians lying in the street running parallel to the one he had just left drove home a morbid point. He had no escape. The rebels had advanced up all major streets and had cut him off from safety. He hid the girl behind one of the vendor's stalls, then peeked out at the other street. Rebels armed with machetes were butchering the wounded, hacking them to death while they cried for mercy. He noted a woman screaming in distress, currently being raped by several of the attackers, ignoring her cries, they mercilessly beat her with their rifles while she tried to resist.

Patrice turned back to where he had hidden the girl and found himself a place behind another of the vendor's carts. He was cut off from all hope of escape. Sounds of footsteps down the alley drew closer. Patrice knew he would be found eventually. He hadn't prayed in years, but was a Catholic, and at this point, all he could do now what exactly that.

The Lord is my shepherd,  
I shall not want;  
He makes me lie down in green pastures.  
He leads me beside still waters;  
He restores my soul.  
He leads me in paths of righteousness  
for His name's sake."

The footsteps grew louder, shouts and the noises of occasional bursts of AK-47 advertising the impending approach of the rebels. Patrice knew he was powerless and simply continued to pray, quivering in fear, yet resigned to the inevitability.

"Even though I walk through the valley  
of the shadow of death,  
I fear no evil;  
for You are with me;  
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me."

Patrice could now hear the conversation between the approaching gunmen, one was ordering the other to check behind the stalls and kill anyone they see. He sighed, resigned to the fact that he was trapped. He closed his eyes and muttered the final lines of the Psalm…

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me  
all the days of my life;  
and I shall dwell in the house of the  
Lord forever."

As he opened his eyes, he was confronted with a boy pointing an AK-47 directly at him, his eyes cold and unfeeling, hardened by a clear experience with conflict. Patrice felt a sense of dread, chills rushing across his body. A child, perhaps no more than 10 now seemed intent on killing him.

Patrice Bolongo simply stared at the child pointing the barrel of the Kalashnikov at his head. He thought but one thing, "I'm going to die here."

He did not even have time to hear the sound of the bullet leaving the gun and entering his brain, his vision going red, and then nothing at all…

* * *

Standing above on the clouds, God simply watched as the Mai-Mai militias tore through Kimemi, making note of Patrice's prayer, and the prayers of so many other Congolese as the machetes and rifles of the Mai Mai hacked and shot the fleeing people. He stood motionless, watching streams of blood run through the street, watched as machetes hacked open pregnant women and ripped out fetuses, watched as women were gang-raped by dozens of soldiers.

"So I have to ask," the Angel Gabriel walked forward, making note of the mass carnage in the town below, "why don't you intervene?"

God shrugged, "What do you mean intervene?"

"Well, stuff like this has been going on since 1996. Then you had Rwanda two years before that, then you had Darfur a couple years ago, and you never really did anything."

"Isn't it obvious?" God asked rhetorically. "I just don't really like black people."

"Well, now that you mention it, that makes a lot more sense in the context of Katrina and Haiti."

"Duh! Now get me some popcorn," God commanded as he turned back to watch the continuing carnage.

**THE END**


End file.
